Archive for November, 2011

Nitronic Rush is an “experimental survival driving game developed by students at DigiPen Institute of Technology” and was released – for free – on the 11th of November.

That very brief description really doesn’t do the game justice; it feels a bit like Trackmania in many ways, but with a extra side helping of crazy (the good type of crazy). Oh, and ignore the “student” bit, the game really is very well put together, I’d say they clearly know what they are doing.

After some exciting meetings in late October here at Stack HQ we’d been wracking our brains to figure out a way to capture and amplify the excitement we’ve seen from past game releases on gaming.stackexchange.com. And then, like an alchemical reaction, or a flashbang sent from the Military Gods, it hit us: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was coming out the same week as Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim! Two epic games coming out a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving – one with a history of popularity on our site, and one promising to be one of the largest media releases of all time.

The ideas bubbled like molten armor-grade steel after that–a contest pitting these two titans of gaming against one another! Plus a launch party! Here, at our swank-esque New York office! 30-inch monitors! 7 Xboxes! Projector screens! Beer! Film ourselves getting the games at midnight release events! Food! A DJ! Livestream it! Professional comedians providing color commentary! Invite bloggers, podcasters and users! Create a custom landing page to compile page views, questions asked and a real time Awesometer to measure which game was winning! More beer! Oh, and do it all in a week and a half. Ruroh…

But we did it! And it was fun! I’ll tell you all about the work we did in meat space to prepare and throw this event without a hitch, but if you just want to hear about the ether-space stuff, skip to the last paragraphs like a Special Forces operative on a pointstreak (you know… quickly).

If you are a stereotypical horny 13 year old male, you’ll find absolutely nothing wrong with Scoregasm.

It’s a fun dual stick shooter where you aim with your mouse in the general direction of enemies, and when you’re surrounded you can click to activate your close range attack and annihilate anything in the circle around your ship. This means that even if you’re surrounded by all sides in tight patterns of bullets, à la curtain shooter, you can always click yourself out of trouble; actually, you want to do that as much as possible.

Killing adds to a combo meter, but click-killing does so twice as fast, and while you can’t just spam your attack you can certainly use it generously. The combo meter drains with time and resets on death. If your high water marker for combo is high enough you’ll unlock exits to harder levels. End a wave with the combo above the required level and you’ll enter frenzy mode, where you’ll get even more ships onto you for a chance to get a crazy high score.

Basically, a bullet hell game that tries to be a little more accessible than the monsters out there, and thus has something to offer to everybody. What’s not to like?

This:

To be fair, the above is a cut out from four minutes of gameplay. You can watch the whole thing here, but the moaning is pretty much a constant throughout the game.

An unnecessary, unjustified, annoying, obnoxious, tasteless constant. And there’s no obvious way to turn it off. Even as a white male in his youth, the “porn sounds” became old real fast.

FallenAngelEyes has contacted the developer and we’ve learned that, luckily, we’ll be able to turn off this constant on and off with the next game update.

Once upon a time, Zelda taught us not to kill chickens, but in games since then that lesson seems to have been lost. Well, Bethesda knows how to add the little touches, and apparently killing people’s livestock can be enough to turn an entire village against you. Fortunately, they also have short memories.

Hello fellow gamers! Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be documenting my journey through this little MineCraft adventure map called Asteroid 5251. Sounds epic, right? It is, but I’m getting ahead of myself. As part of our weekly “Game On!” we’re playing through an Adventure map. But we only have one or two maps, so I went off in search of more. A quick Google search lands me at a MineCraft forum thread for a map called Asteroid 5251: A Medieval Space Epic. I scroll down, glance at screenshots; alright, I’ll bite. Little did I know what I was getting myself into…

Modern Warfare 3 had its three-day head start. And, to their credit, they racked up a decent 60+ questions and 10k+ views. Not bad. But now it’s time for Skyrim to join the contest, and I think we all know what’s going to happen.

In case you’re coming late to the party, we’re hosting a contest between Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3. Each game gets 7 days to get as many views on its questions as it can. Everyone who contributed an a question or answer to the winning game is eligible to win the Grand Prize: a free console or graphics card. We also have a free game (your choice!) for the top question and answer about each game.

Livestream Launch Party

To kick off a weekend of gaming, we’re hosting a live party at Stack Exchange HQ in New York. We’ll be live streaming the party and gameplay at skyrimvsmw3.com starting at 4pm EST. You won’t want to miss it. We’ll be featuring:

The first Indie Royale bundle, “The Launch Bundle”, came and went about a week ago now. I grabbed a copy fairly early, mostly to pick up Sanctum and give that a whirl.

Now, Sanctum is good enough, but it was two of the other titles from the bundle that have really grabbed my attention, and I think they’re worth at least taking a look at – even if you’ve now missed the bundle.

At Stack HQ this week, we’re ramping up for the massive showdown between The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The Awesometer is greased up and ready to start counting views on the Modern Warfare 3 tag starting tonight when the game hits. MW3 gets a few days’ head start, so Skyrim fans can size up the competition before the showdown begins in earnest in the wee hours of Friday morning. The Awesometer will tell us once and for all: which game is more awesome?

Now, I can tell you which one I think is more exciting, but we’d rather settle this thing once and for all. That’s why we’re proposing a friendly little competition on the site:

Here’s how it’s going to work: each game will get seven days from when it launches to ask and answer questions about the game. The winning criteria will be the total number of views the questions get over the course of the week. We’ll stop the clock after seven days and declare a winner on Friday, November 18.